


true and earnest

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coming of Age, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friendship/Love, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 10:59:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7637494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Are you happy?" Angelica asks you.  She does not like him, her sleek-as-water new brother in law, but they both love each other out of love for you. </p><p>(This is how you love: a continuation of affection, not so much contagious as a single piece, tangled together in a colorful tapestry.)</p><p>"Just enough." You say. And you mean it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	true and earnest

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Key and a Kite](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7592299) by [Baamon5evr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baamon5evr/pseuds/Baamon5evr). 



 

 

You have been married for four dazzling, beautiful months. Your husband -- your husband!-- is all that is good and devoted and capable, with a dozen different smiles just for you, a hundred of secrets and shared understanding between the two of you.

It is a ball. You are a wearing winter-sky dress, to go with the sapphire on your ring finger, a now-familiar pressure under your gloves.

"Are you happy?" Angelica asks you. Her words come out ardently, begging you for the truth. She does not like him, her sleek-as-water new brother in law, but they both love each other out of love for you.

(This is how you love: a continuation of affection, not so much contagious as a single piece, tangled together in a colorful tapestry. This is how you chose to live: bright and subtle and a thousand new strands to build with.)

"Just enough." You say, face blossoming into a smile. Your father is talking to your husband in easy conviviality. Aaron turns a little and catches your eye, in that parody of causality he excels at. For the time of a blink his smile mirrors your in helpless joy.

And you mean it.

 

. .

 

This is how you meet him: You are seventeen and the vicar that baptized you and all your sisters is invited to preach at The College of New Jersey. The parish does not close its doors on you, every opportunity open under the Schuyler name, so you and your sisters walk inside, a blush of lighter colors among the durable Sunday bests of the students. It is not Sunday, but a sermon demands the best robes, the best manners. They leave a noticeable space around you, as if you are intruders or statues, and you fight yourself not to look down.

Angelica leads the way to a pew and bows down her head, a regal worshiper. You are under no illusion that you are nit the most religious of your sisters. Mandates are as challenges to Angelica and faith a loss of control she does not abide. Peggy comes for the novelty of the society and the liberty offered by your father's absence.

You stay behind, finding the vicar and offering him your best wishes. He smiles at you and you feel a child again, cloistered and beloved. You are a child, and a girl, and the students skirting your steps do not let you forget this.

You are flustered, hurry your feet, but it is too late; most of the pews are crowded, your sister's huddled between the wall and a matron. You look around, retreat to the back. There is a spot by an empty basin carved in marble. You sit, willing the eyes away from you. Sweat beads under your bonnet. Angelica turn around, frown visible, catches your eyes. You pull a face. Peggy's stifled giggle echoes and you look down again.

The organ player is already warming his fingers when the seat before you is occupied. You hear the door close ponderously as he sit down, laying his hat over his knees.

This boy is young, as young as you, clad in student's blacks. He catches your eyes with a teeth-less smile. You do the same, scoot a little for a more polite distance between them. Then the vicar is filling the goblet and you get at up with the first echoing words.

You sing along with the hymn, sneaking glances at the boy sitting beside you. His back is as straight as yours, his words sliding from his tongue as easily. His latin is perfect. His voice is deep but thready and it falls embarrassingly in the middle of an Hallelujah. He shoots you a horrified look  
and your eyes meet, as kind as you can make them. The humor of the situation must shine through hurt pride because he smiles, unsure, self-depreciating. Your skirts shuffle against the crease of his trousers.

Knees digging into the veined wood, a cold breeze touching their ankles, they worship.

(This is how it begins.)

  
. .

 

The next week you return alone. The darkness and the boy are still there. Your voices rise, rise up. 

. .

 

This's is how you first speak: It is the third time you have seen him, the third time you have seen his head bowed, eyelashes kissing his cheeks. The sky is a pregnant white color and the church filled with the drone of restless parishioners. Your toes ache.

Angelica had worried at the roads but you simply dressed in your warmest coat, the one with the fur that tickles your face, and walk to the carriage. She is right, naturally. The snow starts falling midway thought mass, hushing the verses and framing the stained glass windows with growing frost.

When it becomes clear that it will be a long time before you leave the church, he turns to you and bows. You curtsy and he kisses your hand. You have to take off your glove. His lips are a surprise of warmth on your cold digits.

"Miss Schuyler. We haven't spoken before, but my name is Aaron Burr Jr. You might remember me for my embarrassing squeaky voice."

Your smile widens beyond the polite. "Pleased to make your acquaintance. And that of your squeaky voice."

He grins, suddenly, then look surprised like he did not meant to. You like that look on him -surprised delight makes him look his age.

"I confess, if it takes a snowstorm to get us to speak, I have been longing to ask your opinion on the sermons.

Now it is you that is surprised. No one but your family has asked your opinion on geological matters. "Indeed?"

"Yes. And I have wished to hear your voice, to compare it to your singing, but that is most improper and I apologize."

"I do believe I will forgive you. Are you a discrete man, Mr. Burr?"

"Quite. I am afraid scandal has little appeal to me." he leans with a sly smile "My colleagues think me most dull."

"That is quite untrue, I am sure. Why would you speak to me, if you were a bore?"

"Oh, but I meant to ask you about matters of the spirit and the scriptures, which I have been told by other young people are not the most riveting and interesting only to terribly steady people "

Your words get away from you, stilted and too bold. "My sisters would agree with you. Like your colleagues, they are quite sure I am on my way to sainthood."

"A most godly goal, with a long road to reach it. I do hope you avoid martyred, however. It sounds most unpleasant."

You laugh. People look your way, but you do not look at them. This is good, this, talking with incense in your nose, speaking softly to someone you don't know but would like to befriend.

"Indeed. I have no true ambition to sainthood, for I do not claim the virtues necessary that make mortal people visions of godliness. I simply of being a good christian woman. That is lofty enough for anyone."

"Wise words, and well fitting."

"Only the truth." You say with mock-defense.

"I do not doubt it."

His eyes shine in the weak lighting, bright. He is the still pond, rippled; there is a depth and an intensity to his gaze that is intriguing, equalizing. Her facade in not the only one slipping. His words are measured and somehow long-lasting, no matter how quick his answers. They are eager and clumsy and you understand him, feel him solid and warm beside you.

 

  
. .

 

Afterwards, you take to walking together in the small church garden, behind the chapel. Not that time, or the next, but when spring comes and turns the world green and blue, your joined footsteps trace your way to the chapel on the mud.

You have not had many friends, none that are not your relatives. And he is lonely, too young for the world he lives in. You ask each other questions, toeing their way to friendship.

"Piano or violin?"

You play the piano everyday. It is the happiest part of your day. "The piano, thought I envy how easy to carry violins are. Angelica plays both and Peggy only the harp, though she sings beautifully."

He looks at her in a way that say it was her part of the answer that interested him, a rare sentiment for so one so hungry for knowledge and gossip. "I had lessons, but I'm afraid my sense of timing is quite terrible. I have been reliably informed I sound like a dying cat."

You giggle. You should not be here. You should not be eating apples with a young student with rings under his eyes and hands that twitch under his sleeves. Your reputation would be put in question; your sister's futures would be in danger.

You ask his favorite color instead.

"Hmm." he scratches his chin. "I like them all. Yellow can be tasteful, green is lively enough, but I have to say purple. Like plums."

"Mine is blue." You say with certainty, swinging ruefully in your blue skirts.

"Who do you trust the most?"

"Angelica." A truth without a flinch. It awes him a little, you can tell. "You?"

"Myself." He rubs his neck defensively at your horrified look. "Who else can I trust to hold my priorities first?"

You feel sad for him, fiercely sad. You nearly ask _don't you want to be part of someone else's priorities? To be in someone's prayers and fond wishes and old, well-worn memories?_ But you stay quiet and decide to make him trust you. You do not tell him that. He is a but wild, this boy, skittish with his gangly limbs and stiff smiles. You used to have a dog like that, sleeping in the stables; you fed it with your own bread and hid the bites he gave you so your father wouldn't have him put down. There is still a scar under your elbow, where the bones meet.

Aaron is a little bit like that, a lost cur of society, taking every scarp to rise up, carefully, quietly. But mostly he reminds you of a bird of prey, like an eagle or a merlin.

You lean back against the white washed wall. "My turn. Why did you decide to stop studying theology?"

He hums, tosses an apple seed down among a blueberry bush. He is deliberating if he should lie. This is when he chooses to trust you. You know it, wait for him to speak.

"I wanted to do more than follow my grandfather's steps. That part of the Burr legacy has been done and done well. His is not a shadow I could outgrow."

"Some shadows should be left at peace and be traded for the light. It is futile to fight fire with fire."

These are your thoughts turned to words. They sound terrible out loud, terrible and promising and so much like a promise.

He kisses the back of your hand and you squeeze his, fingers almost as slim as yours.

  
. .

 

Angelica corners you after dinner one day.

"Who have you been writing to?"

"No one." That is almost not a lie. The words you consign to paper are for your eyes only, even if they are addressed to Aaron. He makes you want to speak, to stand still and stare at the candle fire imagining hour of silence, prayer and secrets in the shared dark.

(Every letter is signed _your true friend Elizabeth_.)

"Eliza." She presses.

"Angelica." You say, and regret it at once. It is childish. Lately you have been feeling your inadequacies more keenly, the crash after the comfort of Aaron's company.

Your sister does not do this. She sees your -not resentment, but not helpless awareness either- as something of a personal betrayal. She stares at you with stubbornness fueled by sadness and your heart throbs. Speaking of Aaron would feel like a defeat, like sharing something precious she dearly wishes to hoard.

"If you're in trouble I can help." She whispers, and you rear back. Indignation pulses in your wrists. You are sick of people looking at you like you are a child. That she of all people does it stings, all the more because you already knew she did, didn't you? It isn't a surprise.

I do not wish for your help. I do not need it. Do you think me so incapable as to having no right to independence, you that defend a woman's right so fiercely? Is it just me you do not trust?

I am not a martyr. I am not a saint, Angie. I am Eliza. Is it truly so terrible that I want to know who that is?

You do not say any of this. Your words are pebbles your tongue, nothing to do but swallow them. Angelica only looks more confused, wounded as you walk pass her. You can't even stop yourself from looking back.

 

. .

 

You speak of everything. Anecdotes and annoyances, old stories and bad stories. the books you love and the ones you hate.

He doesn't dismiss your opinions even when he disagrees. You try to understand his, the few pieces of himself he lets fall through the distance he puts between himself and the rest of the world. You lean about his uncle and his sister, the ambition that lurks under his eyes and the many disasters he gets into. He wants so much, for himself and the world, liberty and Justice and the sort of idealism he doesn't like to associate with. 

You don't think anyone has ever respected you as much before.

You speak of yourself in return. You've never liked attention before but this is different. Here you are not Eliza the middle child, Betsey the second daughter. You are Elizabeth: that is what you tell him to call you. Elizabeth, the heavy name you never fit in. You think you want to be heavy, be big. Not in a world-changing way like he does: this is enough. The boy Aaron and the girl Elizabeth and the bells tolling around, through them.

You enjoy it while you can. War will make adults out of you and the colony soon enough.

 

  
. . .

 

"How did you know my name?" You ask one day. Grass crunches beneath your feet and you step around ant burrow.

"Eliza, everyone knows a Schuyler when they step into their midst." This makes you blush, but you do not relent.

"Then why did you not speak before?"

"I had no wish to make you uncomfortable. And to be honest I was still-"

"Embarrassed?" you tease. His eyes crinkle and he concedes gracefully with a nod. They fall silent, filled with the smell of fresh soil and the sound of returning birds, settling in their old nests after the cold winter.

"How could I not trust a trust fund baby?" You tease, recalling the silly pick up lines he had enumerated at your teasing behest. He groans, hiding his face with his hands. You glimpse between his fingers the curve his eyes closed in embarrassment and some amusent, the sweet sweep of eyebrows on cheeks.

  
"Is it really that bad?"

You bite down a grin. "It's pretty awful."

You fall silent. A stray cat walks under the pear tree, recognizable only for the tip of its tail. Faraway a horse's hooves stamp the ground.

"For the matter, I do not feel uncomfortable in your company. It is impossible to not be at peace in such a serene place."

He looks around, at the budding roses and amaryllis, the dark blue of the sky above. "This is quite peaceful," he agrees. Then, lower, softer, "I am glad of it.

You speak, slow as dawn. "So am I.”

 

  
. .

 

He goes to fight a war and you send him every letter you wrote and kept.

Be careful, you write. Be careful, be patient, I miss you. Stand up for yourself. Think of me when you are afraid, I think if you when I'm afraid. Come back safe so we can be brave together.

(he signs _Aaron Burr, yours earnestly_ every time)

But before he leaves, before the bloodshed begins, before he asks your father for permission to marry you he asks you.  
  
"It isn't your father whom I'm marrying. It isn't the Schuyler name I wish to spend the rest of my life with." He tilts his head, mischief at the curl of his lips. "As odd as that might sound, not all my motives are mercenary."

"I know", you say. He his kneeling in the dirt, the chapel to his back. Berries the color of ink sprout from the bushes and stain his trousers a darker black. "I know."

He doesn't even try for what you call a society smile, and that most of all is how you know he means it.

Aaron clears his throat and you laugh a little, hand held against your mouth, because his eyes are twinkling and he had adopted his a preacher's tone without noticing.

"I was going to wait for a better time," he starts, "but it became clear that this is not the time for putting important choices off. We are at war and so every second is a counted second. In the spirit of honesty, I will tell you that I probably not be able to give you what you deserve. But I promise to strive to be your equal, to meet you at a middle ground. To compromise and be happy about it." he smiles. "I cannot promise to love you always, thought at this moment it seems absurd that I might ever not adore you, but I promise to always respect you and care for you to the best of my abilities."

You laugh. It bubbles out of you like water from a fountain. "I will marry you, if only to stop that speech."

"But I wrote it down and everything." He complains lightly, even as he takes you hand and gets up. The ring he holds out is cold silver with a sapphire the size of a button in the middle. It catches the light and reflects it a shade darker than the sky.

You wrap your arms around him and breathe, feel him breathe, feel the afternoon breathe.

You are nineteen and in love, filled with the love that you hold, the one that holds you back.

  
. .

 

Your father gives his blessing.

"I would threaten you to be true, but I have little doubts about that." He says to your betrothed, lips pursed to hide a smile. "Just promise to make our Eliza happy. That will be enough."

"I promise." He says, glowing from your glee and your father's approval and the future that stretches out in front of you, dangerous and heart-thumping hopeful. You holds hands and it has never been more delicious, how well they fit together.

Your sisters are more begrudging.

"He's boring." Peggy complains. "We won't let you marry a boring man, Eliza, you'd spend your marriage yawning."

"I don't think he's boring at all." You defend. A week after she and Aaron disappear for a night and come back dripping river water and whispering terrible jokes, so that's solved easily enough.

"He tries too hard." Angelica says. She'd have made a good judge, would Angelica. Elizabeth, soon to be wed to a lawyer, recognizes a difference is mettle, in passing sentences. "He tried to woo you and he tried to charm us but nothing of it is natural, Eliza." 

You nod. "I know. I love him anyway."

Angelica nods, like it's a decision. "Then we will accept him for your sake, but only that."

You thank her and embrace her and you cry, a little. Because you see things differently than your sister, than the rest of the world, and you're working it out that it's not such a terrible thing. Because you try, as well, and don't think trying too hard is a capital offense the way Angelica does. You have always tried so hard, after all, to be kind and good and loved. Sometimes all anyone can do is be earnest and true and hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Angelica is trying, as well. You are all growing up. It is jarring.

You think you would mind it more if you weren't so helplessly hopeful. 

 

. .

 

"Betsy!" Peggy screeches, ribbons flapping behind her. She comes into the parlor, waving the letter proudly. "Your fiancé has written."

Father looks up from his book and Mother's crocheting slows. Your head rises so fast Angelica grins, but you do not care, hungry hands taking the letter and searching for the letter opener. Aaron hasn't written in weeks, too weak from the sunstroke to hold the pen properly. He had tried writing regardless, but after the first scratched over, crooked letter you had sent him a long one full of affection and orders for him to rest and out down the quill. He had obeyed, of course.

You pour over his words greedily. Peace falls over you at his handwritten, a warmth settling over your chest down to the space between your toes. In this life all a lover's words remind you of is incense and fresh grass.

This is love, you think, paper delicately held in your grasp. This is love and this is war and we are alive, alive.

 

. .

 

You are married in the church where you met. This time you stand squarely in the light and you are nervous. It is alright. He holds you hand. You can be brave alone, but it is much sweeter to be brave together.

"Are you afraid?" You ask him, sitting in the carriage driving away. Your friends and family are behind the curve. The wind still carries their cheering even as it dislodged your veil. 

"No." He says. He sounds sure, surer than you have ever heard him. In the dappled light of the canopy his purple lapels shine spotless. "I know who I married."

 

. .

 

  
You have been married for four war-thorn, bountiful months. Your husband -- your husband!-- is all that is generous and dedicated and careful, with a dozen different complains to be shared just with you, a hundred of plans and preferences kept between the two of you. You catch him, sometimes, touching the wedding ring that marks your marriage, great care and affection in the planes of his face. 

  
Aaron is speaking to a young man, the bold Hamilton he has spoken of with bafflement and affection and envy. His description didn't quite manage to mirror the reality, the hungry light of his eyes, but you see Angelica looking at him with open, stiff hands from holding back and you wonder if these two yearning minds will find an understanding.

You would know. Your marriage is based on building each other new names from the ones the world has given you.

Your sister asks you if you are satisfied and you say,

"More than satisfied." And you mean it.

 

 


End file.
